


The Land Where Everything's Ours

by Eisenschrott



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alcohol, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-18 21:08:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5943141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eisenschrott/pseuds/Eisenschrott
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things that happen to Imperial officers on shore leave on Coruscant: questionable hook-ups, questionable drinks, and a handful of personal issues being quick-fixed through a mattress jig after hitting the dance floor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The civilian clothes lay buried at the bottom of his old trunk. This relic of the academy years had followed him across the galaxy, since he’d been nothing grander than Lieutenant Maximilian Veers.

He couldn’t recall the last time he’d worn civvies, these ones in particular: a black jacket of soft time-cracked synth-leather, and sand-brown cargo pants. In all likelihood Eliana had bought them for him.

Veers stripped warily out of his uniform and folded it; it took him twice as long to put on the civvies and gather the guts to study the result at the ‘fresher mirror. Acceptable. He sighed in relief. The only ill-fittingness issue was not a sensitive spot, that is, his shoulders: the jacket was tight there, too much muscle below—he grinned at that—but the problem was promptly solved by removing the shirt. The place he intended to waste away the shore leave in was scheduled for summer weather; he’d manage with just the tank top under the jacket. As far as shoes went, he could do with the ankle-length boots the army issued for physical training.

There were a dozen other officers on the surface-bound shuttle; the recycled air smelled of laundered clothes, perfume, and aftershave lotion. It was the first time he saw most of them out of uniform. Only the juniors spoke, whispering to each other, in the farthest side of the passenger area.

Coruscant greeted him with the rosy light of a sunset hour. After weeks of exposure to the artificial lights of the _Executor_ , it made his eyes water. He regretted not having brought a pair of sunglasses. Why had he worried they’d look stupid during the night, anyway? Worrying was stupid. And Coruscant’s life forms were into far worse fashion choices. He was damn sure that this not changed since last time he’d visited the planet. Better not to recall when that had been.

Out of the military spaceport gate there was an air taxi platform within walking distance, the yellow sign flashing at the swarm of off-duty soldiers, but Veers had done his public transport research; army personnel above the rank of lieutenant travelled for free, and a maglev tram stop lay a hundred meters down the platform. He would have to change transport twice to reach the Entertainment District. The holomap approximated the travel time from the final stop to the club at thirty minutes; he knew what his own legs were capable of, and would make it fifteen. Twenty if he felt lazy.

A tram halted just as he approached the stop. He accelerated his step, and leapt on board.

The smell hit him like a slap. He staggered to the centre of the wagon as the tram resumed its run.

Living among Humans for the greater part of his time had made him forget what it was like, in a closed area, to be near the sweat of—he glanced around and made a quick count—about ten different non-Human species.

Securing a position by the side window of the wagon, he avoided eye contact but kept watch of what went on behind him in the faint reflection on the glass pane. Sure, scum knew better than attacking a tall, visibly strong, visibly military Human. But you can never be too sure.

Nobody bothered him during the commute. Voices grew more hushed, from time to time, when he stood or sat near. It made Veers want to groan; so much for forgetting about the war! But it did not _always_ happen. Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe the Coruscanti had learnt to be polite, thanks to the stars knew what COMPNOR-masterminded campaign for social morality.

A droid voice on the airbus loudspeaker finally rang and called, “ _Vos Gesal Street, Daring Way_.”

The instant Veers stepped off the car on the sidewalk, a Rodian in the middle of a mixed-species group of teenagers, all too giggly not to be intoxicated, sank to his knees and started making heaving noises. Or what Veers supposed were heaving noises. Still in stitches, the other youths dragged him up to his feet and away, drawling broken words in a language he didn’t recognise.

 _Get your arse on the street and moralise this, COMPNOR_.

…Stars, had he really thought that? Veers rolled his eyes at the shiny club signs and commercial billboards. Piett’s Rimworlder politically incorrect views had rubbed off on him. One more reason to take a few hours’ break from him, too.

He could already tell the Outlander Club sign apart amongst the other lights—one of which was a 9D9 spy droid, hovering discreetly with its camera eye on the unmindful pedestrians underneath. Veers avoided looking at it, pulled up the collar of his jacket a little, and prayed the droid returned him the favour.

On the tubular frame of the club’s threshold, the bass throb of the music blew outside like a gust. He didn’t remember much music, last time he’d been here. Well, in a quarter of century some things were bound to change. He dodged the sentients limping in the entrance, plus a Twi’lek and a Human woman huddled together against the wall, a teal lekku entwined around a slim wrist in a star-patterned sleeve.

He looked the other way, but couldn’t help wondering: if the spy droid took a snapshot of their inter-species snogging, would they get in trouble? Did anyone care who screwed what in this part of the capital?

“Whatcher starin’ at?” mumbled someone behind him, barely audible over the music. Veers walked a bit faster, without turning back, and stopped in front of the counter.

The place had seen renovations. Gone the betting pool consoles and the monitors showing podraces, replaced by clean gravball pro-league games; no way normal Human ears could catch a word of the game commentary, anyway. As far as lousy EBM went, Veers had to admit it was gentler than the stuff topping the charts when he was a teenager. In the alcoves at the corners of the main room, which were larger than he remembered, patrons were dancing. Arms of many skin colours, shiny with sweat and jewellery, pumped up and down to the ceiling. Bouncers stood in the shadier corners, still as stormtroopers on attention. The general in perpetual service within him nodded in approval at the care for surveillance.

“Hello, soldier,” said the barman, and Veers snapped his head to the tawny Human smiling at him across the counter. “Care for a drink before you hit the dance floor?”

 _Soldier_. Bloody hell, was it so evident?

The barman misinterpreted the silence and threw up his hands. One caught a bottle and the other a tumbler. “Something light, I swear. To kick-start the engines.” He flicked the tumbler, full to the brim of azure smoking liquor, to a Nautolan down the counter. Veers noticed then the full meter of empty gap, on both sides, between him and the other patrons.

“Sure,” he said, reading the holographic menu and the price tags, mentally recounting the credit chips in his pocket. “Pulkay, if you don’t mind.”

“Plain or spiced?”

“Plain for now.”

He handed the credits over to the barman, pretending to forget the service tip on Coruscant was lower than the Denonian twenty percent. The barman’s smile widened. Attractive, but not his type. Well, at least Veers had secured one ally in this uncertain territory. The drink was light as promised, pleasantly sweet; after the first tentative sip, he knocked back the whole glass out of reflex. A silent curse went to the admiral of Death Squadron, and their drinking tournaments that always ended in a decisive naval victory.

“Another?” asked the barman. “It’s pay-one-get-three night.”

This time Veers smiled, extending the empty glass for the refill. “Go for the spiced.”

“That’s my boy.”

Veers felt the grin on his face crack like a TIE under a meteor shower. ‘Boy’, for fuck’s sake… _If I’d not kept it in my pants at eighteen, I could have been your father_. He washed the thought down with the drink. The spiced pulkay packed a welcome stomach punch, leaving a fiery trail with a fruity hint on its wake.

He leaned over the counter and told the barman, looking him dead in the eyes, “When I drop by here for the third, make it a Gravity Well.”

“Classic, sir?”

“The variant.” One named after Alderaan, for morbidly humorous reasons.

“Very well, I’ll remember. Enjoy yourself.” He picked up a shaker and a bottle, and vaulted to another side of the counter.

Veers prided himself in having a good eye for distances, and there definitely was more elbow room around him now than when he’d ordered his first drink. This alcohol-addled scum was damn lucky he was in no mood to roar accusations of anti-Imperial feelings. If any Security Bureau snitch was watching, it was their job to report it, not his.

Everything he cared about in the universe now, the mission goal to complete, lay ahead of him, flashing in strobe lights that, for the stars knew what club fashion reason, projected only bright shades of blue.

Humans and non-humans alike stepped aside as he passed. Damn it. Last thing he needed was to make a noisy desert out of the dance floor. He had to make an effort to slump his shoulders and not walk as if he had his officer’s boots on.

In the intermittent blue light, amidst the mass of limbs and bodies and… he supposed it was mostly odd clothes rather than alien skin, he caught a glimpse of star-patterned shirt sleeves and slender feminine hands. They waved about with more grace than the music called for. Beckoning, almost.

Reality crashed through the layer of alcohol, making him grind to a halt at the edge of the alcove. _Maximilian Veers, general of the Imperial Army, hero of Hoth, forty-seven standard years old, widower and father, what the star-bursting fuck are you doing here?_ He was positive, but not one hundred percent certain, he wasn’t speaking aloud—not that he could hear it over the sound rolling in waves from the loudspeakers. Even his heartbeat was one with the bass lines.

An alien fur-covered arm swung into a beam of cyan light. _Too close!_ , screamed Veers’ brain. By reflex he sprang to the side, bumping against a bulky form oily with sweat or something else that smelled like a Mon Calamari fish market. The stinking creature shoved him away, straight into the mosh pit. The dancing crowd didn’t part, and he felt bodies thump against his torso, on the front and on the back—good thing he was too tall to smash into them face-first. The smell and lack of oxygen, however, blasted a chunk of his brain into thin air and made the alcohol whirl in his stomach.

Holding up his arms to his chest, he let the ebb and flow of dancers slam him around in the strobe-slashed dark. It all resembled a few flare-lit battlefields he’d survived. But they were far away and there was no music there. As jerky as the flashes of light, thoughts of _what in the nine hells are you doing here?_ crossed his mind, stung, and vanished. Eventually, his feet stopped shifting at random, just fighting to preserve his balance; a pattern of motion appeared, in what little space the throng allowed. Faster and yet more exacting, like a boxing match between him and the music. He kept his guard up and threw punches to the air above him, ground his feet and pushed back when the crowd pushed him, and it felt damn well even when he got crushed between too much skin—alien, human, synthetic, who the hell cared—had to struggle to break free and, in doing so, he felt digits fan out across him, creeping under his jacket.

 _Fight them off!_ , the general tried to shout over the din.

Alcohol slurred in reply, _Only if they reach for the pocket cash_.

“Hey!”

Veers snapped down his head and blinked sweat off his eyes.

A face was staring up at him, round-cheeked and framed by wavy hair. Wide eyes, lips rouged in a heart shape. The beaming blue light caught up in pretty azure reflections on her star-patterned shirt—most notably, on the sleeve that terminated in a hand holding the front of Veers’ shirt.

He watched her lips move in the intermittent light, and leaned over so she could yell into his ear, “Hey—would you mind—”her breath tickled the wet skin of his neck, “if I—grabbed—your—privates?”

For a moment he thought she meant privates as in soldiers. “We aren’t on the Ex—” He bit his tongue.

“What?” she screamed again. Closer. It was lips that brushed his neck, he was certain.

“Yes, sure—yes!” He nodded for emphasis, and to inch away from her.

In the darkness between the strobes the grip on his shirt was gone; at the next pulse of light he felt it, agonisingly gentle, through the thick cloth of his trousers. He stood still, huffing at the blind nudges the dancing crowd landed on his back, as she traced over his thankfully well-behaved cock. After he’d gotten used to Piett’s ways, this lady was going to have to try harder than this.

She gave a hard grind, flicking her wrist, that made him yelp. He heard his own voice. An alien mug or two turned in his direction.

When the strobe next allowed him to see her, she was grinning. The last time a woman, one with that wavy hair and a single dimple on her left cheek, had given him that grin, it had been…

He was suddenly yanked forward by the zip of his trousers, and her hip bones knocked on his as her breasts pressed against his chest, and he would’ve _so_ kissed her had she not started swaying to the music again. Her arms snaked around his neck and ruffled his hair, her finger pads flicked over his face and between his lips. Veers’ immediate reaction—bless or curse that blasted sailor, once more—was to nibble and suck.

She spun and pressed her back to him, pulling down and forcing him to bow his head. The light intervals allowed Veers a cyan-tinted view of her cleavage and a peek of laced bra. “Well, soldier?” She bit his earlobe. “Tired of dancing?”

His hands, he realised, were lying on the small of her back. The shirt fabric was a thin silk; he could feel the skin underneath, sweat and warmth and goose bumps.

“A bit.”

The bass lines banged his heart out of his ribcage as she uncurled her arms off his neck, and stale stinking air filled the gap between their bodies. But she did not let go of a corner of his jacket, and pulled him ahead of her, to break through the ravers and out of the dance floor.

Without the body warmth of thirty tightly packed beings around him, Veers shivered and pulled his jacket closed. His shirt was rolled up to his midriff, and he fumbled to smooth it down through the jacket.

The woman, for her part, was panting. Her shirt stuck to her torso, leaving few curves to imagination and giving the visual impression the printed stars were the only garment covering her. The rumbling in his ears, he was pretty damn sure, was not entirely due to music-induced near-deafness.

“I’m getting old for the mosh pit,” she said with that smile. _That smile_. She pulled her hair up as she spoke, in a mussed up bun on the top of her head. Just like _she_ did at the pool before slipping the bathing cap on, the very first times he’d seen her and become angry at her tittering when the cadets did their swimming training.

“…hey?”

Veers winced, and the place was again a nightclub on Coruscant, he was an old man wearing shabby old clothes, and Eliana was dead.

“It’s okay, soldier, no Rebel scum here.” She tilted her head, still holding her hair up. It gave him an ample view of her neck and three quarters of her shoulder, dotted with kiss marks. A fleeting image of the teal-skinned Twi’lek woman crossed his mind. “May I buy you a drink?” she asked. “Or—a cab ride home, if you prefer?”

His throat, he found out, was dry and his voice husky. “A drink will do.” At the counter, she made a sign at the barwoman—the cheeky barman Veers had met earlier was nowhere in sight—and didn’t tell him what order that meant. He didn’t ask. “So, how do you know I’m a soldier?”

“Easy-peasy. You move like you’re at an Empire Day parade. You’re ripped, but not steroid overdose ripped. And there’s that serious face.”

Veers shrugged. At least she hadn’t flown off the ‘oh I’ve seen you in the Holonet News!’ tangent. “Who knows? I might be a bounty hunter.”

She laughed. The laughter didn’t sound much like Eli’s, so he could take it; but the dimple and the smile…

“Sorry, you’re _built_ like a greyback. Can’t do much about it. But you dance better than most of your comrades, I’ll give you that.”

The barwoman handed him the cocktails over the counter. Two identical frost-coated chalices, and a bright orange liquid inside; a fine black powder floated on the surface of the liquid. She snatched her glass, and a not-yet-hormone-addled part of him commanded his face into a scowl.

“Nothing to worry about, soldier. I invented this recipe.” She held up the chalice in salutation, and took a generous swallow without breaking eye contact with Veers.

“What is your name?”

“Are you going to look it up on the Holonet and make sure I’m not telling tall tales? Fine, fine.” Her glass clicked against his. “ _This_ is called a Socorro Swing. And I am Gizem.”

“Max.” He drank a sip. Piett had provoked him into trying much worse rotgut, but this was no spring water either. The black powder was spicy and grated on the walls of his throat. “What’s in there?”

Gizem just swigged the rest of her drink. Her skin tone was dark enough—darker than _hers_ —for the flush not to be too evident.

“Is that how you’re supposed to drink it?”

She wagged a forefinger. It came mere centimetres short of touching him. “Sip it, and the pepper will numb your taste buds. You’ll miss out on the rest of the mix.”

“Got it.” Veers gulped down the cocktail, the same as he did when the admiral invited him to drink, before his rational brain hurried up to consider how bad an idea it was.

The lounge faded into a swirl of lights. His body felt lighter and cold, then hot, but the temperature change was not unpleasant. He half licked, half wiped the spicy dust off his lips.

“I told you,” Gizem’s voice purred, nearer than it had sounded moments before. Then an arm clasped his waist, bunching up the edge of the shirt again, steadying him and exposing him at the same time—true damn meaning of love, and he had to receive this epiphany from some hook-up getting him plastered.

Gizem rested her cheek against his chest; the smell of perfumed hair and sweaty skin filled his nostrils.

His arm came to rest on her shoulders and hugged her closer.

“This is wrong.”

“Sorry?” she said.

“Where did your girlfriend go? The tailhead.”

Either the mention of the Twi’lek woman or the slur made Gizem go the slightest bit stiff.

“They changed the music,” she said. “I like this one better. You up for round two?”


	2. Chapter 2

A simple search on the Holonet, even narrowed ( _pro-Imperial sympathies of the proprietor_ being not the least important parameter), would have turned out billions of suggestions on where a high-ranking naval officer at his first visit on Coruscant could spend his shore leave.

Alternatively, he could ask his subordinates for tips. There were dozens of reason why Admiral Piett did not broach this subject to his aide and to the _Executor_ ’s captain.

As for the pilot who flew his shuttle to the surface, she limited herself to service communication: _ten minutes to landing, sir_. Piett couldn’t help wondering if it was the gap of civvies and uniform at full force between them. For all an admiral didn’t shed his lawful rank the instant he shed his jacket and rank bar on the physical level, he felt out of place in boots that weren’t fleet-issue, dungarees of too dark a grey to pass for a navy uniform even at a distance, a taupe shirt his mother had sent him in a parcel when he was a cadet, and an undershirt that, while fine for Star Destroyer AC temp, he’d realised too late was going to make him swelter in the summer weather.

Well, as it turned out since his first steps down the shuttle ramp, Coruscanti summers were nothing like Axxilan summers. The night was warm and windswept, and the city lights left no dark corner on the sidewalk in front of the spaceport. And they called this a night! He was still smiling condescendingly when he approached the airspeeder taxi stop. “Daring Way 208,” he told the Tholothian woman on the driver’s seat.

“Shore leave, hun?”

The engine revved up and the cab glided into a thickly packed skylane. Piett mentally praised the driver’s piloting skills, though at the same time he pitied this planet’s traffic controllers.

“First one I get in a while,” he replied.

The Tholothian’s indigo eyes shot him a once-over in the rear-view mirror. Whatever the taxi driver saw of him, it wasn’t an admiral. “Be careful down there, hun. The lower levels ain’t no Impstar bridge.”

“I will.” _And for your sake, Max, I hope you are being careful too_.

The taxi driver manoeuvred with the skill of a TIE pilot, but after having flown with many such specimens, Piett had to keep his imagination busy during the trip by plotting out a chase route across the skylanes; some ordinary stolen airspeeder, and a desperate, insane pilot the likes of Commander Han Solo. Piett allowed himself a soft sigh of relief; the galaxy was a safer place with that man locked in a carbonite slab. _Infinitesimally safer._ A safe city should not have dark lower levels a nonhuman warns you not to travel to.

Not that he was sure how it _should_ be; the safest place he knew was a Super Star Destroyer—barring the presence of its supreme commander. But there were times, after all, when you had to thank the Force and the fates Lord Vader was on your side of the fence.

He gazed at the buildings where the Federal District must be located, according to the maps he’d memorised, and tried to spot familiar shapes: Imperial Palace spires, headquarters of Naval Intelligence, headquarters of the Admiralty. Seen one skyscraper, seen all. The purple and red lights of nightclubs were a more welcome sight.

The Tholothian had the decency not to drive slow to make the taximeter run, and soon dropped him off at a platform facing what the shop’s neon sign promised was ‘real Tatooine fine cuisine’.

“Cash?” asked the Tholothian.

“Card.”

She grunted, but shoved the card reader towards him without further protest. Transaction details blinked green on the display, including his navy ID. “Hun, I’m serious,” she said softly, “this isn’t a place for admirals.”

Well, lucky for him he hadn’t been an admiral for his whole life. He retrieved the debit card, got out of the cab, and no more than five paces had been made in his advance on the sidewalk, that a humanoid projectile flew out the Real Tatooine Fine Cuisine door and skidded to a prone halt a few meters ahead of him. The body shape was masculine, still twitching. The language he whined obscene insults in, through a presumably broken jaw, was Huttese. Piett moved on without a second glance.

The taxi driver was correct, this level was no place for admirals, if all admirals had been the likes of Ozzel.

It also was one of the most respectable bad neighbourhoods Piett had ever seen. Not a single lamplight was off; few bullet holes or blaster burns on the walls; no sluice muck of putrefied organic matter soaking the ground; whatever the interiors of the clubs and venues smelled of, barely a whiff of it wafted out the doors.

He slipped into a casual non-combatant gait, including the hands stuffed in the trousers pockets. Few sentients going up and down the street were shorter than him, and in the eyes or the photoreceptive organs of a pickpocket, there must be more appeal to be found in the packs of jeering, wobbly-legged, tell-tale well-dressed adolescents from the upper levels. Most of them were Humans. Spawns of high-ranking Imperials, no doubt.

Piett overheard one of them say to a chum, “…But the next day my old woman chilled the fuck down and commed this traffic officer, chewed him out in full admiral rank and shit, so they gave me back my airspeeder…” When a scraggy Zabrak girl brushed against this fine specimen of local fauna and nicked something off his pocket, Piett felt no inclination to call out the thief.

The prostitutes, regardless of gender and species, stuck to brothel doorways; eyelash batting, brazen invitation, lewd stares, and special servicing offers, were activated only when eye contact was established with a passer-by. Most of them had a youthful appearance, but no amount of make-up or plastic surgery could fix the older-than-their-years gaze.

Deeper into Daring Way, the crowd on the footpath thickened and the shiny signs multiplied. Drunks and junkies moved stumblingly, and Piett couldn’t fault them: the lurid lights weren’t easy on his sight either, used as he was to the cold and gentle illumination of the Lady Ex. Better remember this if he had to drag a plastered Veers out of a bar. Or if Veers had to drag a plastered _him_ out of a bar… Piett had to smile to himself, but was careful not to look any passer-by in the face as he did—last thing he wanted was to give unintentional clues to perfect strangers.

Safe and unharmed, with his muscles pleasantly warmed up by the stroll, he reached the Outlander Club. It seemed bigger in the Holonet images, and in the boisterous anecdotes Veers had shared of his quarter-of-a-century old antics. Piett stopped on his tracks, staring up at the sign from a distance; what if it had been all a prank engineered by the general? What if he fully expected Piett to have no social life and no idea where to spend this dratted shore leave, if not by flying circles over his dear dirt-pounder like a Felucian ripper? Perhaps he’d walk in, and would not find Veers here. It would serve him right, after all; the general had claimed loud and clear he meant to ‘forget about the entire blasted war for one night’. Piett had lacked the boldness—they were at the mess hall, and an audience of staff officers is the worst for certain exchanges—to ask whether _he_ was part of the war, too.

Out of old habit, he footslogged it around the building before entering. A sight in an alleyway made him slink into a shadowed corner and take a longer gander: a 9D9 spy droid, hovering at ground level, while a dark huddled figure with a hood over their head—but he recognised the shape of lekkus underneath—was tinkering with its control panel.

Interesting.

The droid’s camera eye clicked open and closed with a screeching noise. A pale-skinned hand clamped it shut and muffled the noise, while the other fought with the wires in the open panel.

Piett retreated into the crowded and lit street. His comm to the ISB headquarters lasted less than ten seconds. After this unexpected good deal, he took a deep breath of smoky air (someone nearby had been literally smoking, low-quality Nar Shaddaa weed being the most probable substance), and strode into the Outlander Club.

It was the calmest venue of this kind he’d ever stepped in. With the significant exception of that one cantina on Axxila, after Verrua the Hutt had had all the exits locked from the outside and toxic gas pumped into the ventilation ducts.

Then he noticed the line of sofas, and who was sprawled on one of them. That made Piett trip over his own feet. A humanoid that reeked of sweat broke his fall and growled at him some insult. It didn’t register. Piett darted through the staggering patrons until nothing was left to the imagination: none other than General Maximilian Veers, the much-glorified hero and poster boy of the Imperial Army, lying flat on his back and taking up the whole length of the sofa, one arm over his face and the other dangling to the ground where his hand clutched an empty glass. He was dressed, so to speak, in a rolled-up and stained tank top that left his midsection bare, and his trousers were pulled as low as the waistband allowed. A half-full glass of what must be a poorly mixed Gravity Well stood straight and still on his abs. An unknown Human woman in a star-patterned shirt was sitting between his legs, her chin on his knee, giggling and running her nails along the inside of his thigh.

“Nothing special, nothing special,” Veers was slurring. “Learned it on Corellia… or was it Raithal…”

Piett cleared his throat. “Good evening, General.”

Veers lifted his arm, enough for a squinting eye to peek. “Do you see any general here?”

The woman laughed louder. Her lips brushed Veers’ knee as she spoke, “Friend of yours, Maxie?”

Piett studied her with a frown. That nickname–Veers had always claimed there’d been one person and one alone in the galaxy who was allowed to call him Maxie. This woman here did bear a resemblance to the late young wife in the holos Veers had sometimes shown him. _Oh, shit_.

“Really can’t imagine,” she purred on, “why you need to make new ones.”

“He got the wrong person, is all.” For a moment, the glare Veers shot him was as hard and cold as the sun off an AT-AT’s armour plate on a Hoth afternoon. “Move along, sir, the show’s over.”

“Definitely the wrong person, indeed,” said Piett, trusting his tone to convey the unspoken end of the phrase. He wheeled and walked to the counter, more briskly than he meant to.

The ‘tender informed him there was a buy-one-take-three offer; Piett had three glasses of grog lined up in front of him, and downed them one after the other.

He had to hold tight onto the counter not to fall off the stool, but the ‘tender whistled. “You hold it well for a Human.”

“Then you may be so kind as to pour me another three.”

He felt a pat on his shoulder and gripped one of the empty glasses, ready to smash it against an attacker’s mug. It was a Zygerrian—a lithe one, about his own build, buff facial fur flecked with unidentified spilled booze, and grinning. “Hey. If the old man and Star Queen over there don’t want you in, I’m game.”

Piett stared at him.

The Zygerrian retreated his hand, but kept smiling. “My date dumped me, you see. Haha. Thought I’d have a shot at the old man when I saw him getting wild on the dance floor, but…” He gestured at the sofa. Veers and the woman still occupied it, but the cocktail glass had been spilled: the dark liquid was all over his abdomen, and the woman had taken it upon herself to clean up - by leaning over and licking it off his skin.

Piett tore his gaze away and knocked back a fresh glass to pretend the fire in his cheeks, swimming head, and sped up pulse were due to the alcohol. Not much to do for the twinge in his pants—more pain than excitement. He crossed his legs tight.

“Lucky bastard, that lady,” the Zygerrian said. “So, what’s your name?”

“What do you mean, wild on the dance floor?” Piett kept his voice very low, very neutral, and very calm.

It wiped the grin off the Zygerrian’s face, and even the ‘tender raised an eyebrow.

“Oh. Uhm. Well…” The Zygerrian’s ears perked downwards, and he started fingering one. “Guess there’s no way to put it mildly, so…”

“Fire off that proton torpedo. I’m a big boy and I can take it.”

“Well, your boyfriend went primitive. Takes some effort to make the ravers here stop and gape, but trust me, even if they didn’t stop, gape they did. Not that he dances well, looks rather like he’s punching someone if you ask me—”

“Accurate.”

“—but damn, he was… he was… Shit, my Basic’s not good tonight. Sorry.”

“You can say it in Zygerrian. I understand the language a bit.”

He sighed dreamily, then used the word with which the slave traders described articles fetching an unexpectedly high price on the market. Piett had to down the second glass at that, at the missions and interrogations that had taught him the full, horrible meaning of the word.

“But he settled for Star Queen, who in my honest opinion is… uh… may I?”

Piett waved for him to continue while he attacked the third glass.

This time, the word defined vaunted merchandise turning out underselling.

“The galaxy’s not fair—shit, he’s coming here—nice talking to you, eh.” The Zygerrian legged it off.

There was a thin pool of amber liquid at the bottom of the glass, but Piett didn’t bother to finish it. He waited, holding his breath; he could feel no strength in his own grip over the glass, and it was because he was drunk. No other reason at all. None. Most definitely it wasn’t because he had allowed himself to get overemotional.

“Firmus.”

He exhaled in a burst, as if a punch had knocked the wind out of his lungs. “…Wrong person.”

Something dropped upon his shoulders. A leather jacket, crinkled and faded, smelling of sweat.

“While you sit here moping,” said Veers, “you might as well hold my jacket until I’m back.”

Piett tore the jacket off his shoulders and turned. The woman was clinging to Veers’ arm, too busy palming well-rounded muscles to pay attention to anything else. The minx had good taste. As for the general, he’d had the decency to pull down his shirt; his hair was a shapeless mass of damp shocks either sticking to his temples and forehead, or standing out upright. Almost as bad as when he took off his helmet after a planetside mission, and his ADC couldn’t persuade him to spare fifteen seconds of his time for a combing.

It would be so nice to drag him into the nearest secluded place, seize him by that messy hair, and—

“Unless,” Veers went on in a softer voice, “you care to join us?”

“For the record,” interjected the woman, “I’m okay with it.” She gave Piett a long head-to-toes look, her expression so unreadable the admiral wondered if she could be an officer, too. “Max tells me he knows you after all, and you’re the filthiest bugger the navy ever saw. His words, not mine.” She flinched, and judging by the movement in Veers’ arm, a bum pinch must have been administered.

“Gizem, that’s rude.”

“But you—”

“Between shipmates it’s different.”

How flattering. Piett folded the leather jacket over his lap, so that it covered whatever visible indication of his arousal. “Kind of you to think of me, but someone’s got to hold his jacket.” He almost added he had no wish to be present when Veers would accidentally call her by his dead wife’s name. Instead, out of respect and out of love, he smirked. Chalk it up as yet another thing the dirt-pounder had to be grateful to him for.

Veers gave him a hard look, somewhat spoiled by the alcohol-induced blinking. He gripped Gizem’s waist and spun her ‘round, then steered her towards a restroom door. Sure, his broad naked shoulders were a nice sight, so nice it struck Piett he’d never seen him undressed under any light that wasn’t artificial. But the instant the door shut behind Veers and Gizem, and an ‘occupied’ sign lit up in red, he felt an urge to throw the glass that way.

 _Really, General?_ Flat-out disgusting. Piett turned to the counter again, glad he had refused to join the strike team for this mission. He ordered a third round, watching the ‘tender’s every move, and the label of every bottle, to stave off the resurfacing memories of what went on in the academy restrooms.

The rum was Thyferran. Not as fierce as Ithorian, especially not the one the Empire-held distilleries produced, but a close second.

Sometimes, they’d force their victim to drink rotgut before dragging him or her to the bog. If a non-com noticed, the poor bastard would be blamed and punished for drunkenness on service.

_That’s a low one even for you, Max._

He pinched the bridge of his nose hard. It wasn’t fair to be angry at him. He had no idea. He was drunk, too, and seeing dead loved ones in living strangers. Just not fair.

Three full glasses, one after the other, were plopped on the counter before him.

“You should’ve told him if that pissed you off,” a voice crept within his hearing range. Piett just made a grunting sound as he emptied the first glass in a few large sips. By the time the first glass was slammed on the counter, and the second in his hand, he had no idea if he’d heard that or if it was his own brain, or the will of the Force, getting preachy.

Yes, it did piss him off, thanks. To be as replaceable in that insufferable land forces berk’s love as he was in his admiral’s rank and station. If Mrs Veers were still alive, none of this would be happening. He poured the whole content of the glass down his gorge, throwing back his head, but the thought was faster: _If she were alive, he would be a happier man. With no need for you_.

A toast to the late sweetheart was in order. His fingers plucked the rim of the glass but it was slippery and they were trembling, so the glass stayed on the counter, short of a few spilled droplets. Grog, for stars’ sake… Veers could kill him for this blatant lack of respect: she deserved better from her life, her husband, her cause of death, and so forth, up and including the toast booze.

Piett tried to think rationally: what would he use to give three cheers to the Lady Ex? Corellian red, the good quality. He flashed his debit card out of his shirt pocket again, and the ‘tender materialised in front of him; she even tried to show a shred of honesty, “That stuff’s not included in the special offer, though. You sure?”

A remarkable credits transfer later, the ‘tender popped a bottle of Corellian vintage red open for him. Piett didn’t trust his hand not to spill the wine when pouring it into the glass, but the mental suggestion to order the ‘tender to pour it instead was brushed aside, for some spiteful reason.

He raised the bottle. _To my lover’s long-deceased dearly beloved, who after ten blithering years won’t damn stay dead and leave him to me_.

Someone tried to nick the bottle off his hand. Without looking, Piett elbowed behind him.

“Calm the hell down, sailor, it’s me!” Veers crashed at his side against the counter. Almost slumped on it. His shirt and the front of his trousers—it hurt to watch the straining hard-on there—bore dark alcohol stains.

“Oh, dear. Are you so drunk that you can’t—”

“Shit, no!” He wiped sweat and streaks of lipstick off his cheek. “While we were—you understand…”

“Just get to the point!”

“Right. So, we were… Wait a minute, shrimp. Are you jealous?”

Piett glowered, but the general was not as easily deterred as that desperate Zygerrian.

“We’ll deal with it later, then. As I was saying, Gizem and I were getting on quite well, when she got a comm. All of a sudden she sounded like one of us. An officer, through and through. The name she gave was ISB-7100.”

A few hundred levels of skyscraper crashed open and tumbled into an abyss underneath the stool Piett was sitting on. “Max—”

“No, for fuck’s sake, I had no idea!”

“How could you be so careless—”

“Maybe because I’m on leave, and I assumed I could spend it however I wanted? I don’t know how hooking up works in the Outer Rim, but here you don’t go around asking your partner for their name, rank, and ID number before kissing them.”

“That’s not the problem—”

Veers held up a forefinger. “Correct. The problem is your presence here. Following me.”

Please, everything but making a scene in a nightclub. Piett slanted a look at the ‘tender and the other patrons; all had inched back to the far ends of the counter from the big, increasingly angered off-duty general. Or maybe they’d overheard the name of the Security Bureau and, with the wise survival sense of scum, wanted nothing to do with people who had anything to do with the thought police.

“Don’t change topic, Firmus,” Veers cut him off the instant he opened his mouth.

“It doesn’t count as following if I simply had no idea where else to go.”

A groan. Good. Piett was expecting a profanity-laced invitation to leave at once.

“Let me guess: you didn’t ask me if you could tag along from the start because you were sure I would say no. Right?”

Piett stayed silent until he felt sure his voice would not waver. “I’ve made a mistake. You have my apologies, General.”

“Be more specific; was your mistake stalking me in the first place, or getting caught?”

“I hated it when my sister or my best friend did that to me, too.”

Veers blinked. Caught by surprise. Very good. Piett wetted his lips, feeling the aftertaste of grog. He, too, was tipsy enough that he didn’t mind sharing details. “It was a safety measure. I hated every minute of it, but it saved me more times than I care to count.”

“Saved you from what?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Or rather, you don’t want to tell.”

“Indeed.”

He crossed his arms. The ‘I am still offended’ effect was spoiled by the palms rubbing his elbows. _Cold now without a convenient source of body warmth, eh, General?_

“Well, is the Coruscant underworld so bad that I needed protection? Do you think so, now that you’ve seen it?”

Piett was still fairly sure he could lie to Veers and get him to believe the lie. But not with this much grog clouding his mind, making his clothes fit too tight. “The Empire be praised, no.”

“Figures.” Veers reached for his jacket.

“Are you going?”

Instead of pulling the jacket off his lap, Veers groped under it, fingering the seams of Piett’s trousers. “I have twenty hours left to play civilian.”

“Eighteen, Max.” It was a good thing Piett still had the wine bottle to clench his hands around, so he could keep them off the man leaning so close to him as to breathe on his ear. The neck of his shirt had turned into a noose, but Piett didn’t dare unbutton it.

“I should leave you alone with the wine. It would serve you right.”

He forced the _no, please, stay_ behind his gritted teeth.

“But I don’t want to spend the next few weeks knocking at your quarters’ locked door and begging you to stop brooding. So…”

The instant Piett felt lips press on the corner of his jaw, and a large hand enfold his lower deck artillery, all restraint plummeted to the ninth hell and further down, to the uninhabitable rock bottom of Coruscant. He flung his arms around Veers, burying his face in the crook of that lovely neck and grinding his teeth tighter, until they hurt, to keep himself from saying aloud words that would make him barf up all of tonight’s grog. _Don’t go. Don’t leave me. Take me anywhere you want, fuck me standing in the restroom. Just stay_.

Ugh, poodoo. Horrifying.

He only looked up to chug from the bottle over Veers’ shoulder. Every sip that landed in his stomach radiated heat, and he was sweating under his clothes. He heard Veers laugh quietly, and what sounded suspiciously like cheers and clapping noises around him; the Zygerrian’s voice resounded in there, too. Veers’ free hand was in his hair now, stroking slow circles on his nape; had it not been for the increased pressure from the one that held his crotch, he could have slipped into a blissful unconsciousness.

Veers pulled him away, and even if he was gentle, no effectual handhold was possible if not at the cost of relinquishing the wine bottle. He swiped the jacket off Piett’s lap, too, and put it back on.

“Max, wait…”

“Do you have a place for the night?”

He blinked. “Why should I have—oh.”

“Stars, man, when was the last time you had a shore leave?”

Piett assumed the question was just for mockery purposes, and said nothing. The general didn’t want to know. Neither did he want to remember.

“No worries, that’s already been taken care of.” Veers finally seemed to notice the wine. “We’ll just need a stopper and a bag for that.”


	3. Chapter 3

They limped their way out of the Outlander Club arm in arm—or rather, Veers’ arm lying like a forgotten thing on Piett’s shoulders, and the latter holding possessively onto the former’s waist. Along the way, it slid further down to pinch through the trouser fabric.

Veers couldn’t help a soft whimper. “Is this a night for bold tactics, Admiral?”

“This place isn’t the Lady. And I’m not an admiral right now.” Piett nudged him clear off the path of a staggering, coughing Togruta man, then off that of a Cerean woman shoving passers-by aside as she stomped down the alley, high-heeled sandals in a hand. “I must say it is a relief, for once in a while.”

“Yes, to go about like two ordinary—” _boyfriends_ , it evaporated on the tip of his tongue. He shook his head, which did nothing to erase Eli’s ghostly features off every feminine-shaped sentient within his field of vision, but did a lot to make nausea nestle in the middle of his forehead.

Piett rolled the bottle inside the brown flimsi bag under his left arm. “Care for a sip?”

 _How could you tell, sailor?_ He flashed him the brave smile he’d put on for the benefit of troop morale during the darkest fights of his career. “I know we’re not on duty, but can you at least keep _that_ thirst under control for a little longer?”

“…I can’t uncork it with one hand.”

Veers almost told him to use his teeth, but… stars, the bad ideas it might give him… “It’s a short walk. Over there, you can already see the sign.”

“The one with the blue lights? Isn’t it a brothel?” His steps slowed down; Veers felt himself dragging him a little.

“Do you think I am that kind of man?”

He snorted, keeping his eyes down. Then he caught up with Veers’ pace again.

The lobby was empty, purple and red walls and drapery lit in a soft orange glow. The air smelled of floor disinfectant, and the promo pictures on the hotel’s Holonet site had had several cracks in the wallpaper edited out. Not even a droid was there to man the reception desk; technically, there wasn’t even a desk, just a panel with touchscreens and slots for debit cards and credit chips.

While Veers punched in a reservation code and the machine spat out a battered keycard, Piett swiped over a few of the available rooms and burst out laughing. “People on this planet are nuts.”

“Yes, and don’t you get any strange ideas, sailor.” Stranger than he normally had, alright. Veers motioned him through a metal detector, and the elevators that waited at the end of the lobby. “I’d taken into account that I might have to spend the night alone and just need a bed to crash on. So I rented the cheapest comfortable room they had.”

“No wampa fur blankets, eh?”

Veers shoved him inside the cubicle. The hatch closed, the elevator shot up as soon as the keycard touched the optical reader, and Piett stood leaning against the wall, giving Veers a look through half-shut eyes that would have smouldered through a Super Star Destroyer’s deflector shield.

Grunting at the strain in his pants, Veers pressed himself to the shivering minute body in front of him. His tongue plunged inside the collar of Piett’s shirt, and it surprised him beyond the arousal that his skin was so hot, salty with sweat. Dratted foolish sailor might have dropped to the ground from a heat stroke, had the walk been longer. The wine sloshed inside the bottle. Piett crossed an arm over the small of Veers’ back—

“We politely remind our guests of room 318,” a robotic voice boomed over the lift’s intercom, “that this hotel’s internal regulations forbid intercourse in public spaces. Further transgressions might incur in pecuniary fines.”

“Sons of a Hutt,” Veers mumbled as he stepped aside. Letting in two drunken idiots with a bottle of booze was fine, but no elevator kissing was allowed. Were the public morals daft like this, last time he’d roamed this part of Coruscant? Fuck if he remembered.

The voice had not finished droning on (“We accept cash payments in Imperial Credits only; we do not accept flesh tributes or slaves, nor the following currencies…”), that the lift door slid open.

The landing they lurched into, not daring to even hold each other’s hand, was lit in the same dim orange as the lobby; a blue ‘318’ sign shone on top of a closed door.

The room itself was only slightly more spacious than Veers’ quarters on the _Executor_. Maybe it gave that effect because the bed was larger; even if he was drunk on booze and lust, Veers spotted the real main difference at the very first terrain-assessing glance. “We don’t have those on the Ex.” He pointed at the vending machine.

Piett went to check it, discarding the bottle on a chipped synth-wood table and his shirt to the floor on the way. Veers had to go and sit on the bed, just in time before his knees collapsed; his legs were just so much weaker without the tall army boots on. “Firmus, get the stuff and come here.”

“It wants ten credits for a condom and thirty for the lube!” He hadn’t sounded so outraged since the day he’d received the latest Joint Chiefs memorandum, announcing new budget cuts. “Basic medical supplies should be for free!”

“Maybe it’s better quality than military-grade stocks?”

Piett muttered his candid thoughts on civilians and better supplies than the military, in a most poignant Axxilan wording. It sent a live spark seething down Veers’ spine, and all he could do to act on it was whip off his shoes and socks, then his trousers… Fucking hell, the stains there looked like dry blood. What had that bartending son-of-a-bantha mixed into the Gravity Well?

“We’ll do just fine without this shite.” For emphasis, Piett slapped the front of the machine, wiped sweat off his head with the now-removed undershirt, and strode to the bed. Veers inched back a little, staring. He couldn’t mean just dry humping. Or that he’d screw in the astromech droid without oiling the port first.

“What’s wrong?” asked Piett in a gravelly voice. Before the half-arsed stammering attempts at a reply could be cobbled together into coherent speech, Piett grabbed the front of his jacket and pulled him over on top as he lay down on the mattress. “Just kiss me.”

_You don’t even need to ask, you stubborn vac-head._

Veers prodded his chin up with a fingertip, and traced along the underside of his jaw before drawing his teeth and tongue there.

The body under him winced. He bit harder. Piett responded with a sigh and a low hum, his hands holding onto Veers’ hips; they’d already burrowed their way to his bare skin unnoticed. _Ever the stealthy bastard, aren’t you?_ He bent his head to the side and pressed a squelching, sucking long kiss to the square of throat where the carotid pulse beat at its strongest.

Nails dug into his loins. He half-expected Piett to blather something about gentleness and what if the mark turned out visible above his collar, command bridge modesty and the usual fake coy drivel. Instead, one hand crept under his jacket and his shirt, trailing up his lower back one vertebra at a time. The other materialised on the side of his head, gingerly tickling his right ear.

Veers gulped in drool and craned his neck backwards; Piett’s thumb slid into his half-open mouth, and he nibbled lightly then moved on to the forefinger—

The taste of her fingers hit him like a shock whip. Young skin, nail polish. What was her name? Gizem, yes, or was she…?

“Ow!”

With a gasp, he snapped back to reality. Piett spun his hand into the full light of the ceiling lamp; was that blood on his fingers? A chilly draught, like when the dance floor crowd parted a bit and fresh air circulated, made the hair on the back of Veers’ neck stand. “Fuck, I’m so sorry…” He squirmed backwards and stood up on his knees between the other man’s.

“Think nothin’ of it, luv.” Piett wiped off the blood on the coverlet. By chance, something on the headboard caught Veers’ eyes. Either the light was too dim (likely) and he was plastered (certain) and thus seeing things, or whatever male had creamed the headboard belonged to a species that had some darn weird uses for bioluminescence. Maybe he should complain to the hotel manager. Get dressed and go complain. Perfect excuse to get dressed and leave.

“Don’t get dreamy,” drawled Piett, and the foot he planted on Veers’ lower abdomen—dangerously near to the artillery battery—made sure the general got the dispatch. Gently but resolutely, he pushed Veers behind, making him crouch on the floor in front of the bed’s edge. _Oh_.

“Mind getting closer, sailor?”

Piett obediently shifted so that his legs from the knees downwards dangled over the bedside. “No teeth there, if you please.”

Fleeting shame warmed his cheeks, like sunlight through treetops. _Focus on your task, soldier_. Button off, zip down, a first drawn-out kiss along the rod, trousers down to the knees, slip one boot off then the other, trousers down the rest of the legs and off, ball them up and throw them aside, pause in case the admiral disapproves of having his clothes mistreated (“What’re you waitin’ for now, berk”), flick tongue all the way up one leg, hook fingers under the shorts waistband and tug it down. “About damn time,” rasped Piett. It all melted into a half-strangled sob when Veers wrapped his hand around the hard shaft and licked the slit, while his thumb stroked just below the bell end.

Before going further down, he looked up to check the effect: for a light preparatory assault, it sure had left Piett in a pleasant state of blush and ragged breath. He was lying propped on his elbows, a clump of blanket clutched in each fist, his head reclining on his left shoulder and his neck displaying the pink-mottled result of Veers’ earlier mouth work.

The second wave considered itself cleared for attack. Veers took the whole tip between his lips, in an alternation of tongue-swirling and sucking, while one hand kept caressing the shaft and the other crept down, to the bollocks and below, then over to a thigh. The skin there was bumpy with standing hair.

He started bobbing his head, slowly at first and going faster at a gradual, relaxed pace that his alcohol-impaired brain could control: slide to half the length, up again, down again. He closed his eyes, just let the arousal and long-practiced muscle memory do the work. Saliva trickled freely, down the other man’s cock and his own chin. The hand he’d kept on Piett’s thigh was doing nothing, so he brought it down to fumble with the front of his trousers.

A sudden pressure surrounded his waist, and he hummed questioningly. He touched a knobbly knee and the near-imperceptible groove of what Piett had told him was a vaccination scar.

“You have a bloomin’ lot to make up for, _Maxie_.”

Veers froze, and looked up to meet a stare as unpitying as the malice he’d sensed in the name the admiral had called him. The one name that nobody was allowed to use…

 _I can call you Maxie, can’t I?,_ Gizem purred into his ear _. It’s cute._

 _Sure._ A mad, wrong thought of calling her Eli flashed across his mind.

And then, _Friend of yours, Maxie?_

…Shit.

Piett hauled himself up to sit and grabbed him by the hair. It hurt, but Veers didn’t protest.

“Keep those filthy paws of yours in sight and don’t even think of boxing the Bendu monk.”

Veers made a ‘hm-hm’ affirmative sound, in the vain hope the thrum against the hot flesh would mollify him. He placed his trembling hands over the other man’s hip bones, fingers splayed over to the back of the pelvis. Crush with a bit of strength, and the bones would break like ration-issue hardtack. Nothing personal, of course. But a pang shot through his own straining fully clothed groin.

The hold on his hair turned into a feather-light caress over his forehead and cheekbones. “Stop when I tell you, not one second before. Don’t swallow anything.”

Had his mouth not been full, Veers would have answered ‘yes, sir’.

The caress turned into a vice, and forced him down until the whole rod was in his mouth and its tip knocked against the wall of his throat.

“Now get going.”

He had to stiffen himself and wait a moment, until the gag reflex waned; when he relaxed again, he felt so dizzy from the lack of blood to his head, he feared he might faint. No point bothering with a slow start. He pumped up and down the cock in his mouth, only careful not to bite, manoeuvring the other man by the hips so that the angling made the task easier. One pass at a time, Piett bucked harder and moaned louder.

When the noise told him it was the right moment, for the enemy would not be paying attention to a sneak attack, Veers tickled that ridiculously sensitive spot at Piett’s hip joint, that the spread of his legs had left exposed.

Piett almost leapt off the bed. “Son of a Hutt…!” and the rest of the sentence died down in sobs and giggles. It barely sounded like his voice anymore, and by the stars, that alone put to shame every wild erotic claptrap in the whole Entertainment District. Veers slowed down his rhythm to a near-halt, savouring every centimetre and every tiny bulging blood vessel on his tongue. He reached the tip and paused there, watching Piett take his misbehaving hand and treat it to a hail of pecking kisses over the knuckles.

There was nothing but unabashed desire in his gaze. The admiral was truly on leave now.

All it would take to capture the flag was a stroke of tongue all ‘round here, a vigorous sucking a bit lower, suppressing the urge to laugh at the whimpering tone he used to call his name.

“…Max, I am going to pull you away.” A deep, shaky breath. “Careful with your teeth. Careful, understood?”

Veers retreated, before the hand gripping his hair could give a tug. Better to surrender on one’s own terms. Piett let out a pained bleat, only in part restrained through gritted teeth. Too visceral to be part of whatever game his filthy brain had decided to play.

 _Serves him right. You should be angry at him_. Sure he should, but instead, Veers found himself stroking soothingly up and down his thighs. “Is something wrong?”

The answer was an arched eyebrow, and a glance at the loaded ventral cannon on stand-by.

“Except for the obvious.”

“Don’t move until I’m finished.” He let go of Veers and gripped the dribble-slick flagpole.

 _Oh_.

Veers shifted to a more comfortable position on the balls of his feet, held onto the crook of Piett’s knees, and rested a cheek on his thigh, close enough that the other man could feel his breathing on the meat-and-two-vegs; he cheated a bit, too, by exhaling through his mouth and blowing the air towards the base of the shaft.

When he heard the cracked remnant of Piett’s voice call him something terrible in Axxilan (sounded like a Huttese loanword), he shut his eyes. His face was so flushed he barely felt the warmth of spunk on his skin—neck, cheeks, eyelids, forehead, some got on his hair.

Piett dropped flat on his back, short of breath. But not so much as to be unable to mutter, “Beat this, light-skirts.”

“What are you…” No, playing dumb wouldn’t work. “You’re still mad at me over Miss Imperial Sex Brigade, aren’t you?”

The panting paused. “Of course.” Another couple seconds, oddly quiet. “Who else should I mean…?”

“I swear she was the only woman who picked me up tonight.” It was half a lie, and the shrimp here was neither stupid nor blind. If Veers’ heart was thrumming like a hypermatter reactor, it was not entirely out of unfulfilled lust: a cold stream of fear was running in his blood, too, making his muscles tense.

“Blast it all. Get the wine.”

Veers slid out one leg from under his arse. The foot was numb, pins and needles shot through the calf. And that wasn’t even keeping into account the third leg in his pants. He grimaced at the white splotches on his jacket and shirt, made a mental note to hunt down a washing machine, and hauled himself upright; an AT-ST with faulty joints would have moved with more grace, but he limped his way to the table and back with the bottle intact. Piett didn’t bother to sit up when Veers dangled the battle trophy above him. “Do help me up, dear.”

“I should plough you where you are, and your permission be damned. You aren’t my superior now.”

“Do it,” he said, smiling placidly, “and I’ll make sure the entire navy knows why you lost your navcomp over that specific redheaded woman type.”

Veers clutched the bottleneck tight. It didn’t break, Corellians had witnessed too many bar fights throughout their history not to stock their booze into shatterproof glass. Piett extended a hand; all thoughts of performing a crash test on his skull dissolved. Veers yanked him up, and flopped down next to him on the mattress. His boner didn’t like it, and he groaned. The instant Piett reached for the bottle, he raised it high to the ceiling.

“Max, stop being so childish.”

His turn to smile. “Let me out of my clothes, then you can have the plonk.”

The first answer was a sulky, pucker-lips frown. The second, a pincer movement to the very evident bulge in the front of his trousers. Merciless, crushing, no quarter given. Veers bucked, writhed, and nearly blacked out, but kept his arm up. The wine sloshed inside the bottle, the sound alone raising fresh bubbles of nausea in his stomach, and he made an effort to still his muscles.

Piett shifted to sit spread-legged behind him, pressing his chest to Veers’ back. For lack of skin-to-skin contact, all that Veers could feel was the heat of his body through the layer of clothes, and it was at the same time infuriating and so, so damn arousing.

The second hand joined the pincer, a tactical reserve thrown into the battlefield at the critical time. The stars knew he tried to hold a shred of dignity by gritted teeth, he really tried. But a few strokes and squeezes into that assault, he threw back his torso to adhere as much as he could to the body behind him, and tilted his head so that there could be kisses, up and down his neck, along the arc and dimple of his shoulder, making the skin burn under his jacket—why hadn’t he taken off the blasted thing, anyway? The mattress was too soft and was giving way under him, some distant analytical brain corner noted: no other way the short-stacked bugger could reach up there.

Most importantly, though, why in the sun-shitting blazes was the front of his trousers still zipped?

“Please,” he realised he was wheezing in-between each breath, “please, just…”

“Who am I, Max?”

He blinked, barely managing to crack his eyes open, and twisted his neck to try and stare at him.

“Answer honestly.” The voice was calm. The admiral’s again.

“A sodding… gun-fucking… absolute son of a…” He growled and kicked up his legs. Shit, he was wet like a woman, the pants fabric stuck to his skin and worsened the sense of constriction. Almost there. Almost.

“Are you imagining to be with someone else now?”

Veers gulped in air. His bottle arm was shuddering without control. “Not with you chattering away in my ear, Firmus!”

One hand abandoned the southern battlefield. A gasp later he felt a touch on his straining elbow, then the weight decreased. Supporting him.

The other rubbed and kneaded harder, so hard he let out a ragged cry and tried to swat it off. A bite to his earlobe warned him to cease and desist. That small sharp pain was the final straw: every muscle in his lower body tensed, his eyelids pressed themselves shut, and the sound he made while shooting his load was so snivelling it drew tears of shame out of his eyes.

Far away somewhere, a blunt object thudded to the ground.

When the whole round of ammo was spent, Piett gently lowered him flat on the bed. What must be several seconds passed, until his breathing and the rage in his stomach eased.

“Firmus?”

“I’m here.” For good measure he touched—or kissed, it was hard to tell the difference now—Veers’ sweat-coated forehead.

“Rotten son of a Hutt.”

A quiet laugh. “I’m beginning to think you’re right. Care for some wine?”

“Hell no.”

“As you wish.” The bottle cork popped open. “Are you sure? It’s good.” When Veers didn’t answer, the stroking touch over his forehead returned. _So good_. “Come on, General, you cannot be out cold so fast.”

“Where’s the ‘fresher?”

“Why should I know? You booked the room!” A faint splashing noise and a fainter ‘ah’ at the end of the swallow. “I assume…” Piett cleared his throat. Pity, the wine-induced hoarseness suited it. “I assume it’s that door over there.”

Veers counted to three in his mind, and pulled himself upright, then on his feet. The planetary rotation had accelerated, but it was nothing that dropship flights hadn’t forced him to get used to. He avoided looking at the state of his clothes until he was in front of the ‘fresher mirror; unlike the one in the admiral’s quarters and in his own, this was a man-sized thing that offered him a devastating head-to-toes view. “Oh, _shit_!”

“Don’t get so virginal,” Piett quipped from outside the ‘fresher. “We’re all grown men here.”

The washing machine exacted forty creds. Leather, cotton, and whatever fabric made up his trousers weren’t supposed to be lumped together, but fuck if Veers cared. The shower, too, was an extra on the bill, and he grumblingly settled for a wet towel instead; a clean-up and a piss later, he marched starkers out of the ‘fresher, flipping a credit chip in his palm. The cool air cleared his mind, and Coruscant was again spinning at its normal velocity and around its proper axis.

He found Piett sitting on a clean corner of the bed, tippling on the now half-empty bottle and glaring at the headboard. His clothes were nowhere to be seen; knowing the admiral, they’d found their neatly folded way to the cupboard.

“I didn’t do _that_.” Veers felt his stare on him as he changed course to the vending machine. “Use the ‘fresher if you need to, just forget the shower.”

“Do I have to leave you a sip?”

“Sponge.”

“I’ll pretend that’s a yes.”

“Out of love?”

A sigh. “Out of love.”

Veers smiled to himself while he fed the creds to the machine and punched in the codes. In the meantime, Piett made his hit-and-run flight to the ‘fresher.

At a closer examination once the vending machine had spat out condoms and flask of lube, the stuff _was_ fancier than the odourless, colourless sanitary products the military had to spare. ’20 Naboo Flowers Fragrance’, however, was the most unnecessary rubbish this side of the galaxy; it smelled like the interior of a candy shop, and Veers had never had a sweet tooth.

He heard the ‘fresher door hiss open, and the footsteps; maybe it was the lack of boots and this foreign floor, but they sounded light and hesitant. An arm latched around his waist. “Yes, General, you have just spent part of your salary on something crassly stupid.”

“Says the one who visited his favourite brothel every month on Axxila.”

Piett was silent for a moment, then laughed it off. “If only, if only!” He rested his head on Veers’ left pectoral, and in the meantime stroked a trail down his spine and pinched his arse. “So… bed, table, or floor?”


	4. Chapter 4

ISB-7100 was getting old.

The headache drilled at her skull, despite the aid of a few pills at breakfast time. Breakfast had consisted of one slice of buttered bread; her stomach had threatened open rebellion if she tried to ingest anything more. Except for water. Sithspit, since the workday had begun she’d been responsible for the office water dispenser losing a quarter of its supply. Every time she had to rise from her desk, Coruscant spun out of its orbit around her. The monitors and holoprojector on her desk were too bright. The ceiling light was too bright. The sky out of the window was too bright.

Blast it. Once upon a time, brilliant Security Bureau officer Gizem Sahagun could be boots-on-the-hill on Socorro in the morning and dance several bunk jigs with the patrol Destroyer captain at night, then start again the next day fresh as a Kashyyyk rose.

She inhaled sharply and cut the alien woman mid-sentence, “Listen—Sundance,” it took her an instant to recall the Twi’lek mole’s codename, “I am familiar with _everything_ about your flawless service record, and every effort the Empire put into your re-education. _That’s_ why I am so displeased. You got caught like a rookie. By an officer on shore leave, no less! Be _thankful_ it was one of us.”

Sundance stood expressionless on attention. Her teal face and headtails had taken a sickly hue when matched with the grey prison suit, for all ISB-7100 knew there was a passable girl underneath. A residual flutter of drunkenness made Gizem imagine her in a white uniform, like hers. Awful. A compelling argument for the Imperial policy of keeping non-Humans out of the military.

ISB-7100 raised an index finger. Co-workers joked she’d copied the gesture from the late Grand Moff Tarkin. And who was she to discourage this rumour? “I trust the lesson of the night in custody shall not go to waste.”

“It won’t, ma’am,” Sundance said in the firm tone and dead eyes of the reconditioned operative whose test run task had included shooting at point-blank her child daughter and a dozen Free Ryloth militants.

“Good. Now, did you at least find out who it was that destroyed that 9D9 unit?”

“I thought the mechanics team had extracted the data from the wreck itself?”

 _Since when have you learned to_ think _again, dolly?_

ISB-7100 just stared at her, focusing her tired eyes, until she saw her blink in unease.

“The latest recordings were damaged,” Sundance caught herself, “but they showed what the facial recognition software identified as Admiral Regel’s teenaged son, firing an energy slingshot at the droid and thus disabling it.”

ISB-7100’s headache clutched her head tighter. “Where did the boy get an energy slingshot in the first place?”

“It’s the newest fad in the Lower Levels, ma’am. Until three months ago, repurposed laser cutters were all the rage.”

The truth sketched itself on a blackboard in ISB-7100’s brain that remained, always, untouched by the hangover: spoiled teenagers breaking Imperial property, for boredom and the nine hells of it. This, this was the thing that had made her lose her chance to get laid with the real-live General Veers of Hoth; she could have bragged (or complained, but up-close the man was a most well-aged piece of meat and would likely not have disappointed) about it with her co-workers till Life Day.

Another mental blackboard sketched the second truth, the one that must make its way into the after-action report: “Damn the Anklebiter Brigade. Those pesky Rebel-backed urchins are getting bolder each passing day.”

“They do, ma’am,” Sundance echoed without missing a beat.

“Maybe it’s high time for a bust.”

“Maybe, ma’am.”

“Now get lost, tailhead. I have to comm the Director.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

**Author's Note:**

> Original tumblr prompt: "wait a minute, are you jealous?"
> 
> Title courtesy of [_Stripped_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U662cA1u374) by Depeche Mode.


End file.
